


Ascension for the Pious (Leave the Heretic for Dead)

by Eissel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Can be read as Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Canon pretending that ambition is always evil is stupid, Character Death, Character Study, Economics, F/M, Gen, Historical Revisionism is Discussed, Hurt No Comfort, Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter), Morality and Ethics are Discussed, Not Canon Compliant, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), POV Alternating, POV Charlie Weasley, POV Multiple, POV Percy Weasley, Percy Weasley-centric, Percy deserved so much better than what canon gave him, Politics, Realpolitk, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Second War with Voldemort, Swearing, The Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter) is Terrible, Violence, Wizarding Culture (Harry Potter), Wizarding Politics (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21619315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eissel/pseuds/Eissel
Summary: Percy had always seen the world for all its constituent parts.The rest of his family? Not so much.Charlie walks into a bar, and finds his brother slumped over a table.
Relationships: (Past) Penelope Clearwater/Percy Weasley, Charlie Weasley & Percy Weasley
Comments: 22
Kudos: 553





	Ascension for the Pious (Leave the Heretic for Dead)

**Author's Note:**

> This can be read as a semi-sequel to my other Percy fic, Black Sheep (which is getting an actual sequel, I just need to buckle down and write it), but it can just as easily be read by itself.

When Charlie walks into the Leaky Cauldron and asks Tom for a glass, he doesn’t expect to be told, quite bluntly in fact, that his younger brother was passed out on a back table and  _ someone  _ needed to get him home. 

When Tom finishes, Charlie looks at him blankly, running through the brothers that would be in the pub at half past 1 in the afternoon and comes up blank. 

“Which one?” He asks at last. 

“The tall one, works at the Ministry.” And  _ that  _ certainly wrapped things up nicely, now didn’t it? Charlie had nodded, gotten up off of the stool-the idea of a stiff drink long abandoned- and marched to the back, where the copper-red locks of one Percy Weasley spilled over the table.

The first thing he notices about his brother is how long his hair has grown since last he’d seen them. Percy’s curls spilled on the table like water, they had to go past his ear by now.

The second was how thin he looked. Percy had never been muscle-bound like some of the other men in the family, but he had never looked so  _ skeletal  _ before either. 

He walks forwards, and nudges Percy awake, which is when he learns that Percy isn’t so much passed out due to drinking than passed out due to sheer exhaustion. The other Weasley has dark circles around his eyes, starker than they might have been if Percy wasn’t so pale. The glasses wearing Weasley blinks at Charlie, squints, and his eyes go wide. 

“Why are you here?” He doesn’t know which of them had spoken first, but it didn’t really matter. 

“Never mind why  _ I’m  _ here, Merlin’s Beard Percy, you look like Death half warmed up!” Blue eyes scrutinize him, searching Charlie for a motive. 

Percy isn’t half wrong to do so, Charlie  _ had  _ stopped in here to get a drink before visiting their family’s estranged son. He just had expected the meeting to come  _ after  _ drinks, not before. 

“It doesn’t matter why I’m here.” Percy says, pushing himself off of the table. “Did you need something from-” Suddenly, with the reminder of  _ why  _ he had gone to see Percy in the first place filling him, Charlie cuts him off.

“Tom told me to wake you up.” Percy blinks exactly once, then glances over at the counter where Tom is. 

“I see. Well, thank you then Charlie. I’ll be taking my leave.” Charlie grabs his arm. 

“I haven’t seen you in  _ ages  _ Percy, are you really going to just leave?” Charlie feels like throwing up, lying like this, to his  _ brother  _ especially, feels disgusting, like he had just swallowed a whole pint of Manticore blood. 

Blue eyes search for motive once more, and Charlie feels stripped naked, as though he was bearing his soul for Percy to poke and prod at. 

“I suppose you can side-along.” His younger brother finally grinds out. He takes out a pair of galleons and lays on them on the table, before snatching Charlie’s hand in his own (he could feel the  _ bones, _ had Percy been eating at all?) and appararting them both out.

* * *

When Percy lands in his flat, he drops Charlie’s hand immediately, leaving his brother to straighten and right himself. 

He’s under no illusions that this is to be an idle visit. Charlie may have happened upon him by accident, but the  _ visit  _ served a purpose: Convince Percy to come back home. He’d heard several variations of the spiel over the last year, and wasn’t looking forwards to going through it  _ another  _ time with yet another family member who wasn’t going to listen. 

“You’ve been doing well for yourself.” After years of half-thoughts like this, words and feelings lost in the in-between, Percy’s gotten good at fishing them back out. 

_ Better than Dad, better than you deserve.  _

He wished Charlie was less obvious about his feelings. 

“Well, the position I’m in is fairly prestigious.” He says blandly, searching through the cabinets for tea and crackers, it wouldn’t do to be a bad host.

“It’s good that you’re doing well for yourself.” Charlie’s gaze tracks over to the mantle, and Percy cursed his own idiocy and tenderheartedness for leaving  _ that  _ photo there. Normally, it wouldn’t have been a problem, since the people he would normally have over already knew the whole story, had helped him through the fallout even. But today- “Is that little Penny Clearwater?” Charlie picks up the photo and laughs. “It is! Oh, I had forgotten you two were dating-” 

_ Of course he had. Too busy with dragons to care about your brother, no?  _

“So, how is she Perce?” Percy set the tin of crackers down with much more force than was necessary. 

“We broke up 2 months ago.” Charlie goes silent. 

_ It wasn’t a breakup, he had rounded a dark corner and saw Penny’s black curls spill out onto the marble floor like ink, saw her face frozen in a scream, watched blankly as figures in black jeered and laughed, but he said and did nothing, body frozen because if he  _ **_tried_ ** _ to do anything,  _ **_did_ ** _ anything but breathe and stare he’d join her and he couldn’t afford to die yet. _

“O-Oh… I’m sorry to hear that.” 

“Don’t be.”  _ She died bravely  _ goes unsaid, and it will forever go unsaid. He continues his preparation. “So, what brings you back to the country?”

“The wedding.” There it was, the segway into yet another  _ Percy, won’t you please come home _ , speech, as though he didn’t have concrete reasons for leaving, as though this entire bloody conflict could be solved by  _ talking  _ the problem down. 

Damn his older brother’s filial piety, if Charlie was at least here out of his own volition Percy would be able to herd him out via piling him with drinks or boring him half to death, but he was here  _ on behalf  _ of Bill, of their  _ parents _ . 

Damn it.

“Bill’s getting mar-”

“I know that Charlie. I bet the whole damn world knows with how you all are broadcasting it.” He was only surprised that he hadn’t seen it splashed across all the society pages yet. Bitterness filled his voice, and Percy didn’t bother to restrain it. Ask any random twit out on his Tuesday shopping trip, and he could tell you all the latest gossip, but ask him about politics, about what was going in the Ministry-  _ keep your head down, don’t say a word, don’t act suspicious, don’t  _ **_die_ ** _ \-  _ and he’d look at you blankly at  _ best.  _

(At worst, it was a look filled with understanding, at worst it was a look of  _ empathy  _ because they were living the same waking nightmare as you)

Percy wonders briefly if his brother thought that he’d hit his head and spontaneously gained memory problems. He’d  _ led in  _ with “I’m back for the wedding,” did he really think that Percy wouldn’t know who he was talking about?

“I just figured you wouldn’t have known.” Percy doesn’t bother to dignify that with an answer, and sets a tray down on the coffee table. 

“Earl gray, two cubes sugar, cream.” He says before Charlie can request. When his brother takes the cup and sips at it, he wonders if Charlie knew how he took his tea.

Probably not in all honesty.

“So, we were wondering, are you-” Charlie pauses, and Percy wants to tell him to hurry it up, but he’s worked with slower politicians, and Charlie is family. He’ll let it slide. “Are you coming?”

“I’ll make an attempt.” He demures. Taking vacations at the Ministry had gotten more than a  _ little  _ dangerous in recent years, and he wasn’t about to up and disappear, that would just cause trouble for everyone involved.

“An attempt?” Charlie slams the cup down, and Percy wished he’d had the foresight to add a finger or two of brandy to the pot. As it stood now, he was liable to get a headache, not even from Charlie’s shouting, but from the mental effort it would take not to throw his brother out. “What, can’t you put your differences with Dad away for all of 2 hours?”

“Differences with Dad...” Percy murmurs. Was that how they saw it then? A minor spat, a row?

_ Oh yes, while Percy was treading water trying to survive, and his father was safe and secure, it only followed fit that his family thought that his  _ **_father_ ** _ was the victim. _

_ While Percy relied on his wits, while he worked himself to the ground trying to stall and stymie every dystopian law that threatened to get through, while he sold his soul to the devil, it only followed fit that his family wouldn’t even try to dig deeper.  _

_ Paid his dues indeed, he’d paid them in blood and broken family bonds. _

“You say that like we had an argument over what we should have for dinner.” Percy says over his own cup of tea. “As though I’m the first person in history to believe that placing all your hope in a vigilante group is a silly idea at best and dangerous at worst.” Even back during the first war, it wasn’t like the Order had been the only group claiming to fight on behalf of the people. Percy distantly recalled other such vigilante groups that hadn’t been as honorable as the Order had been. 

It was a valid concern. 

Charlie looks close to boiling over, and Percy stares him down. Being a Gryffindor didn’t automatically preclude someone from thinking rationally, but the other houses were correct when they called them reckless. 

Case in point. 

“Playing at being revolutionaries-”  _ Did you see them lying where they died? Did you see them lying there side by side? They were just children, they didn’t  _ **_know_ ** _ \- “ _ Isn’t going to help anybody in the long run. _ ” _

Percy can list off many reasons as to why the Order’s actions were dangerous, not in the least of which was their haphazard attacks  _ after  _ the deed had already been done, creating more ruckus in the area, which in turn spurred more Death Eater attacks, which further damaged their small economy in a vicious cycle. 

Percy can think of several things the Order could be doing instead of playing heroes; passing legislation, strategic assassination, or hell, sharing information with their  **_allies_ ** . Percy rubs at his temples. 

In Muggle Britain, their government gained power from the people, and it was somewhat the same principle in the Wizarding World; power from the people for the Prime Minister, power from blood for the Wizengamot, power derived from merit for other positions in the government. If the Order actually wanted to help, they’d target the Prime Minister's position and go from there, not flit around having fire fights in the streets.

“The Order is at least  _ doing  _ something!” Yes, promoting anarchy was certainly doing  **_something_ ** . It was like Charlie hadn’t passed History of Magic. 

“And throwing the public into complete panic whilst doing so.” Percy rebuked. “That’s how you get a police state.”  _ French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Tudor England.  _ Fear was a strong motivator. 

“Fudge  _ lied! _ ” Charlie cried out. “He had people trying to take over Hogwarts, if he had  _ bothered  _ to get off his arse to deal with You-Know-Who-”

Percy snidely wonders if Charlie knew what  _ other  _ issues Fudge had been dealing with that year, because he would place a hefty bet saying that he didn’t. 

_ The goblins were agitating over the wand issue again, incidents of magic in muggle areas were up tenfold, a progressive aura of fear was taking over, political opponents from all sides breathing down our necks. _

(Really, with how Scrimgeour acted in those last few months, he should’ve been ashamed of himself, yet he still had the iron fucking  _ balls  _ to come up to Percy and ask him to stay on staff. 

He should’ve spat in his face.)

Percy finishes off his tea, and calmly (not calmly, he nearly shatters the thing) sets the cup onto the table. The sharp sound cuts Charlie off, one of the quick and easy ways to defuse a Weasley temper. 

“What the country needs right now, is a strong central government, we haven’t had one for ages, and that’s no one’s fault.” He shrugs. “That’s just the way it is. After the first war, no one ever bothered to pass thorough reforms, just sat on their laurels after a baby took out the threat for them.” 

And that’s why Percy has to stay, because he won’t sacrifice a child when he can do something instead, won’t let a child die for him because that was no better than putting the blade to their throat himself. The thought of letting Harry Potter face death for a whole country a second time burned Percy’s soul raw and he hated it. Why were they so bloody  _ insistent  _ that a tale of love, recklessness, and  _ luck  _ needed to be rewritten as a tale of fate and divine birthright?

“Dumbledore didn’t sit around and do nothing!” Functionally, he damn well  _ had.  _ Theories after Voldemort’s first defeat had been many, but once everything had settled into seeming normalcy, and everyone could collect themselves, most historians agreed that the four house system, or rather, the  _ failure  _ of the system had caused Voldemort’s rise.

The same system that Dumbledore had left to fester and rot, for  _ years _ after the war’s end.

Slytherins raised in echo chambers, Hufflepuffs constantly derided, Ravenclaws left to grow haughty and prideful, and Gryffindors, the school’s golden children. 

It was no wonder Voldemort had found followers so quickly. Nevermind Dumbledore’s cult of personality, even if that had never existed (as if their culture could refuse to glorify someone who had defeated a dark lord, he’d have better luck finding one of the Lovegood’s creatures), the house system would’ve remained and eventually a child would have slipped through the cracks. 

(more than already did, that was)

“I’m not saying that.”Oh yes, he was, but Charlie (really, all his family) required a delicate hand and silk words. “What I am saying is that Dumbledore sees the bigger picture, and he doesn’t exactly care for his tools once they’re done being useful.” Look at how Potter had been treated, left to an abusive family and made ignorant of magic. “Dumbledore is a great man-” 

And great did not equate to  _ good,  _ but baby steps.

“He is.” Charlie cut in, face stubbornly set.

“But we don’t need a figurehead. We need a government. One that can care about the rule of law, about rights of its citizens, about the economy.”  _ The galleon was depreciating against other currencies, they were on the verge of a recession and the Order  _ **_wasn’t helping_ ** _ with their sporadic, retaliatory attacks that left their economic centers in ruins. _ ****

“Dumbledore cares, otherwise he wouldn’t be Headmaster!” That roundabout logic made Percy’s thoughts swim. Dumbledore cared, sure, but he cared about the future, not the present, and when you were dealing with people’s  _ lives,  _ you wanted someone to care about the here and now. 

He doesn’t mention the historical revisionism that Hogwarts is swamped in (Percy found the old books- Hogwarts had been used as fortress more than once, the goblins had been wronged more than once, wizards weren’t always as powerful- at the time he had asked ‘what are we trying to remember’, like the naive schoolboy he was, thinking that the books were just there for simple reading, material that was unimportant to teach, never realizing that omission meant loss, meant  _ forgetting. _ It’s never “what are we trying to remember” it’s always “what are we trying to forget”), doesn’t bring up the many times Dumbledore had let something dangerous into the school, damn the children who might die. 

“Alright, sure, Dumbledore cares. But so does the Ministry.” Charlie goes red again, and Percy decides to grab a cracker and ride out the ensuring storm. 

“Like hell the Ministry cares!” 

“If the Ministry did not care even the smallest bit, if it were so lost, why would Father still be working there? Why keep his post?”

“He’s gathering information, disseminating it. More than what you’ve done.”

_ Keep his post and spy, ah yes, Father, hypocrite I name thee. Kept his post and ignored people like Penny who died in the corridors, kept his head up and high, lorded over the ones who were unable to get out or were trying to achieve change from the inside.  _

The retort dies on Percy’s tongue as he glances over at the clock, wondering when Charlie will just  _ leave.  _

“I’m doing my best. My actions aren’t made to satisfy impatient leaders-”  _ Get a family out, fake papers and fake them  _ **_well,_ ** _ contact a liaison in the States, in Europe, retain those who can power through it, warn those who are up on the chopping block- _ “But that’s fine with me. I’m doing all I can to ensure that when the war ends, we won’t be scrambling for our wands because the economy is about to collapse and the goblins won’t bail us out, to say nothing of the international community.”  _ They were a laughing stock, he’d read the reports, the claims that the British were so magically impotent that their so called “all powerful” Dark Lord was defeated by a mere baby. _

“Waiting can do more harm than good.”  _ Because you would know that, right Charlie? _

“True enough. But rushing about also does harm.”

“Percy, we’re in the middle of a war!”

“And things called  _ tactics  _ and  _ strategies  _ do, in fact, exist.” Charlie tosses down his cracker, and sits back with a huff. 

“This is the real world Perce! We don’t have time or the liberty to sit around and plan forever!”

_ The real world?  _

The real world was seeing Penny dead on the floor, pretending not to notice as yet another coworker disappeared, hiding real files and submitting fakes, hoping beyond hope that he wouldn’t be next. The real world was  **not** a vigilante’s playground. 

“What would you know?” Percy is well aware of the acid in his voice. “You went gallivanting off in Romania to play with dragons, and when you come back you’re going to  _ preach  _ to me about what’s going on right outside my front door!?” Charlie looks stunned, which Percy takes with a savage pride. 

_ Good. Let him taste what I’ve had to deal with all my life.  _

“I...” Charlie waits, and thinks over his words. A first. “This… This isn’t helping.” He gets up, and it chafes Percy that the first thought Charlie thought of uttering was in reference to his own mission, and not of Percy, the man in front of him. 

But that’s how it’s always been, how it always will be, and Percy knew damn well that a single conversation wasn’t about to change that.

(When you were Iscariot in a family of disciples, you got used to being thrown to the wolves)

“Good-by Charlie.” Percy can feel the age in his own voice. 

“Goodbye Percy.” It sounds final, and Percy wonders if when he gets to work the next day, he’ll find a letter addressed to him, announcing that Charlie had up and died, baptized in blood and false vows like all the rest. 

(That’s silly of course, because if Percy  _ were _ to even get that letter it would be weeks later)

Charlie apparates out, and Percy gets up to wash the plates.

* * *

Charlie lands at the Burrow a confused mess. It should’ve been easy (Percy had always been easy, been the quiet good child they were to look up to), but if it had been easy he supposed that one of the others would’ve done it long ago.

Instead he had been treated to a side of his brother he hadn’t recognized (was that because it was new, or had it always been there and he just hadn’t noticed?), and was left reeling from new revelations about the spat that had torn their family apart.

“Charlie? Is that you?” He hears his mother ask from the doorway. “It  _ is _ !” She runs up and engulfs him in a hug, and as he leans into it, he can’t help but feel uncomfortable, Percy’s raw anger still lingering in his mind. 

(It’s a bitter love letter, Charlie will realize as he lies awake in his room, staring at the breaking ceiling. If Percy didn’t care, didn’t still love them, he wouldn’t be killing himself over it.)

He shook his head to clear it, causing his mum to back away a little. “Is there something wrong- oh I  _ knew  _ you shouldn’t have gone off to Romania, you haven’t been taking care of yourself-” Tuning her out, he gazed at the Burrow where undoubtedly Bill and his fiancee were making life hell for everyone else as only couples in love could. 

He couldn’t afford to dwell on Percy and his mistakes right now, the rest of the family still needed him. 

(After the war ends, he is the first one to enter the Minister’s office. Thickneese hadn’t been on the battlefield, he wanted to make sure Percy was safe. 

He finds his brother kneeling over the cooling body, bloody knife in hand. He can see the inscription from where he stands:  _ Quia precium sanguinis est.  _ (This is the price of blood, it says, Charlie thinks it’s fitting, both for the man who wields it, and the man claimed by it) 

“You killed him.” He says, still in shock, denial permeating his sentence.

“I did.” Percy confirms, and Charlie realizes he never really knew his brother at all.)

**Author's Note:**

> The moral, political, and social systems of Harry Potter have interested me for a long time now. For instance, in the Weasley’s we get a group of people that’s unquestionably good. They’re moral, upstanding people, and depicted as incredibly kind.
> 
> But when their kid (the one who gets bullied on a regular basis by his brothers and his achievements mocked by his family, mind you) says something that more or less amounts to: “No, I don’t believe the person with no evidence, and hey, it would it maybe kill you to show me some actual respect” gets treated the way he does in canon (post-Estrangement, I don’t think anyone in their family speaks well of him like, at all), questions start to pop up.
> 
> Yes, it turned out Percy was wrong, but not for any actual reason. Percy Weasley wasn’t wrong because of faulty logic, evidence he overlooked, or hell, even a misunderstanding.
> 
> Percy Weasley was wrong, because the plot needed him to be. 
> 
> From Percy’s POV, Dumbledore is a child-endangering egomaniac with delusions of grandeur, and he suckered a vulnerable kid into his plot. By the time argument occurs, it’s not like they had any concrete proof Voldemort was back, and with all the pieces he had, it is perfectly reasonable to expect him to come to the conclusions he did!
> 
> To Percy Weasley, who grew up with a father working in the Ministry, who encouraged him to go into politics, the Ministry of Magic is the place that ends up looking morally correct, mostly because family-centric morality still applies as an young adult, and hey, Arthur is still working at the Ministry, so they should still be morally upright, right?
> 
> Percy’s whole argument with Arthur is predicated on one simple fact: Arthur did not resign from the Ministry, even though he thinks that they are wrong.
> 
> What this reads as, is a concession. That Arthur does not hold concrete enough evidence (or conviction in his beliefs) to protest the Ministry’s claim, that there is doubt in Dumbledore’s claim. 
> 
> So, Rowling fucked up and accidentally made a scenario where the “morally upstanding good guys” are acting based on faulty logic (to an outsider) and no evidence, and when someone requests evidence they are mocked, and might as well be disowned. In addition, when that someone says that they have been promoted in the wake of a political scandal that was not their fault, the “morally upstanding good guy” decision is to put them down for it.
> 
> “You aren’t good enough, you weren’t good enough, this was not given to you based on merit.”
> 
> Fuck, the discussion of good vs evil and how love is the strongest force is a good one, but Rowling should’ve stopped, and realized that the lesson that was being taught was not one of unity, but of submission to the majority. Do not dissent if you want to be remembered as part of the Light.
> 
> Dislike Snape all you want, but his backstory is another symbol of this: 
> 
> “Take the abuse from the Marauders, who cares if they nearly killed you, you’re a Slytherin and hence are below the ‘good and righteous’ Gryffindors.” 
> 
> Dumbledore let the system that made Voldemort fester, he further fractioned the houses, and was fucking surprised when Slytherin house became a bastion for evil. Dumbledore sat on his fucking laurels for so long, and believed that everyone would believe him when push came to shove, and never made any politically salient moves to ensure that, and was shocked when people didn’t believe his every fucking word.
> 
> The Ethics and Morals of the Wizarding World are interesting, because hell if they don’t make you see the heroes in another light.


End file.
